Time in Motion

One of the less-noticed arguments associated with urban-space perception while moving is the pedestrians' subjective time perception. Indeed, in many cases, the pedestrians' perception of the time needed to travel a distance is shorter or longer than the actual time. The main objective of this paper—which has been neglected by many urban designers—is to determine the effect of the physical-spatial structure of a built environment on the pedestrians' perception of time. It is hypothesized that different spatial configurations and physical structures can have specific effects on the observer's subjective perception of time, while moving in an urban space.Since this study needed to examine different types of physical-spatial structures from a time perspective, while preventing the possible involvement of other non-physical factors that affect people's time estimates, real urban environments received limited use in this study. Instead, the researchers used a virtual-reality technique to maximize the similarity between the observers' perceived conditions and the real environment. This makes it possible to make dynamic and continuous changes to the physical-spatial variables under study in a semi-real context, and to control other variables affecting the time variable. In addition, to achieve a systematic and logical review, the researchers analyzed the effects of the physical-spatial structures in nine defined simulated tests on pedestrians' subjective time perception. The results supported the hypothesis of a logical relationship between certain physical-spatial configurations and the observer's subjective time perception while moving in an urban space. The logical relationships between the nine configurations studied in this paper were presented as part of the study’s practical results.

Product configurators have been important enablers of customised product design. In a configuration process, customers need to specify the attribute choices that best satisfy their needs. A combination of customer decisions then informs the desired product. Psychology and information retrieval researchers have acknowledged that time is an important factor in measuring customer satisfaction with decision-making process. Some recent studies have also shown that the subjective perception of time is an even more relevant measure of customer satisfaction. However, it remains unclear what factors are most significant in affecting a person's subjective perception of time. This study investigates the relationship between people's experience with the on-line configuration process and their subjective perceptions of the time involved. Empirical experiments are designed to answer the relevant research questions. The experiment's results show that two factors, namely the difficulty of the task and the customers' motivation to process information, both significantly affect customers' perceptions of time. We also find that customers' perceptions of time are significantly correlated with their satisfaction with the configured products, and that perceived time is moderately correlated with satisfaction with the configuration process.

Optokinetic stimulation affects temporal estimation in healthy humans

Signatures of Subjective Time Perception in the ERP During Stimulus Encoding

\n A música tem sido utilizada na pesquisa de percepção subjetiva de tempo por apresentar características de estrutura temporal, como o ritmo, o andamento, os acentos musicais, entre outros. A combinação destes elementos durante a escuta musical suscita a ativação de processos de atenção e memória envolvidos no processamento da percepção temporal. Face à diversidade de elementos que compõem a estrutura da música erudita ocidental, a utilização de uma análise multidimensional (MDS) tem contribuído para a pesquisa na área de cognição musical uma vez que delimita dimensões a partir de uma representação perceptual. A MDS provém de uma família de técnicas de análise de proximidade de dados, que é obtida por meio do julgamento do participante, que compara vários objetos (estímulos) em vários traços (elementos), concomitantemente. A utilização desta técnica visou identificar dimensões que influenciaram a percepção subjetiva de tempo durante uma tarefa de apreciação musical. 48 participantes (músicos e não músicos) ouviram 16 trechos musicais (20 segundos) do repertório erudito ocidental e os associaram às durações de 16, 18, 20, 22 e 24 segundos. Através da MDS foi gerada uma solução bidimensional representando a distribuição dos trechos musicais em função do julgamento de similaridade temporal. Uma análise musicológica foi realizada para avaliar os elementos musicais comuns encontrados nos trechos agrupados próximos. Foram identificados os elementos andamento, intensidade, densidade timbral e tensão, tanto para os músicos como para os não músicos. Foram identificadas duas dimensões complementares, 1) tensão e densidade timbral e 2) andamento e intensidade para os participantes músicos e 1) andamento e intensidade e 2) densidade timbral para os participantes não músicos, como responsáveis pela alteração na percepção subjetiva de tempo durante a apreciação de música erudita ocidental.\n

e22123Background: Perception of time strongly correlates with people’s current emotional state. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between subjective perception of time and le...

The effect of an olfactory stimulation on the perception of time was investigated through two different experiments based on temporal bisection tasks. In experiment 1, the durations to be classified as either short or long were centered on 400 ms while in Experiment 2 there were centered on 2000 ms. The participants were different in the two experiments (36 subjects in each one). In each experiment, half of the subjects learnt the anchor durations when smelling an unpleasant odor (decanoic acid) and the other half when smelling no odor. After the learning phase, both groups were tested with and without odor. The results showed opposite effects depending on the duration range. The subjects underestimated the time in the presence of the unpleasant odor in the short duration range while they overestimated it in the long duration range. The results have been discussed in the framework of the pacemaker-counter clock model and a potential emotional effect induced by the odor on the subjective time perception has also been considered.

Phantom limb pain is commonly known as a neurological condition, where an amputee will continue to feel a limb that is no longer present in a painful fashion. Virtual mirror therapy (VMT) has been suggested as a method for alleviating phantom limb pain. The inclusion of tactile sensation in VMT has shown to be beneficial; however, delivering a tactile sensation to a phantom limb, without the use of invasive procedures, can be difficult. The current approach for transferring a tactile sensation to a phantom limb is called visual capture. The ability to establish visual capture has been demonstrated in VMT applications. However, there is little research into whether an established visual capture effect can be relocated to a more distal location for phantom limb pain management. This paper investigates whether a passive vibrotactile sensation can be moved to a distal location from its veridical location using a series of distally located lights presented in either a random or a structured fashion. Eight non-amputee participants were tasked with localising a static tactile sensation on a virtual arm. These vibrotactile sensations were presented simultaneously with a visual light stimulus, either co-located or located distally at three different locations. Findings show that a tactile sensation without a visual stimulus was difficult for participants to localise; however, when a visual stimulus was added, they were better able to locate the veridical tactile position. The structured group exhibited a larger range of tactile relocation responses than the random group. However, this result was unreliable, with the majority of the responses situated at the vibrotactile actuator. There was a significant difference between the random and structured group’s ability to retain a visual capture at the veridical vibrotactile location when the lights were located distally. The random group did not express a visual capture response when the lights were presented distally while the structured group did, suggesting the structured group developed a more robust association between the visual stimulus and the vibrotactile stimulus. Findings may be of use where increasing tactile acuity without significant alteration of a veridical location is a desired therapeutic outcome.

Studies in virtual reality (VR) have introduced numerous multisensory simulation techniques for more immersive VR experiences. However, although they primarily focus on expanding sensory types or increasing individual sensory quality, they lack consensus in designing appropriate interactions between different sensory stimuli. This paper explores how the congruence between auditory and visual (AV) stimuli, which are the sensory stimuli typically provided by VR devices, affects the cognition and experience of VR users as a critical interaction factor in promoting multisensory integration. We defined the types of (in)congruence between AV stimuli, and then designed 12 virtual spaces with different types or degrees of congruence between AV stimuli. We then evaluated the presence, immersion, motion sickness, and cognition changes in each space. We observed the following key findings: 1) there is a limit to the degree of temporal or spatial incongruence that can be tolerated, with few negative effects on user experience until that point is exceeded; 2) users are tolerant of semantic incongruence; 3) a simulation that considers synesthetic congruence contributes to the user's sense of immersion and presence. Based on these insights, we identified the essential considerations for designing sensory simulations in VR and proposed future research directions.

It is known that the perceived duration of visual stimuli is strongly influenced by speed: faster moving stimuli appear to last longer. To test whether this is a general property of sensory systems we asked participants to reproduce the duration of visual and tactile gratings, and visuo-tactile gratings moving at a variable speed (3.5–15 cm/s) for three different durations (400, 600, and 800 ms). For both modalities, the apparent duration of the stimulus increased strongly with stimulus speed, more so for tactile than for visual stimuli. In addition, visual stimuli were perceived to last approximately 200 ms longer than tactile stimuli. The apparent duration of visuo-tactile stimuli lay between the unimodal estimates, as the Bayesian account predicts, but the bimodal precision of the reproduction did not show the theoretical improvement. A cross-modal speed-matching task revealed that visual stimuli were perceived to move faster than tactile stimuli. To test whether the large difference in the perceived duration of visual and tactile stimuli resulted from the difference in their perceived speed, we repeated the time reproduction task with visual and tactile stimuli matched in apparent speed. This reduced, but did not completely eliminate the difference in apparent duration. These results show that for both vision and touch, perceived duration depends on speed, pointing to common strategies of time perception.

Given the well-known problems of replicability, how is it that researchers at respected institutions continue to publish and publicize studies that are fatally flawed in the sense of not providing evidence to support their strong claims? We argue that two general problems are (a) difficulties of analyzing data with multilevel structure and (b) misinterpretation of the literature. We demonstrate with the example of a recently published claim that altering patients’ subjective perception of time can have a notable effect on physical healing. We discuss ways of avoiding or at least reducing such problems, including comparing final results with simpler analyses, moving away from shot-in-the-dark phenomenological studies, and more carefully examining previous published claims. Making incorrect choices in multilevel modeling is just one way that things can go wrong, but this example also provides a window into more general problems with complicated designs, cutting-edge statistical methods, and the connections between substantive theory, experimental design, data collection, and replication.

Experimentation was carried out to test for a relationship between subjective time perception and ability to make temporal judgements. The performance of 20 depersonalized and derealized patients and 20 controls, was compared on a variety of tests of time judgement administered under normal laboratory conditions and under conditions which have been shown to induce or amplify distortions in subjective temporal experience. The results failed to indicate any reliable relationship between subjective temporal experience and ability to make time judgements. The performance of patients did not differ reliably from that of controls under any of the testing conditions; exposure to distorting conditions did not have a reliable effect on temporal performance and Ss who reported temporal distortions either in their past life or while actually performing the tests of time judgement, failed to perform differently from Ss who did not report distortions.

The intricate role of sleep in sustaining critical physiological functions and preserving cognitive integrity is well-established. Inadequate sleep, whether in duration or quality, profoundly impairs fundamental cognitive functions, including memory consolidation, sustained attention, executive decision-making, and temporal perception. This study endeavors to explore the effects of short-term sleep restriction on subjective time perception employing both retrospective and prospective paradigms to unveil how acute sleep restriction reshapes temporal cognition in healthy adults. Following ethical approval, 31 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 35 years participated. The experimental protocol which included assessments conducted under two conditions: after four consecutive nights of regular sleep and following three nights of sleep restriction, during which participants’ sleep duration was reduced by two hours per night. Subjective time perception was evaluated using both retrospective and prospective time generation tasks (RTP and PTP). To assess cognitive performance, participants completed the Stroop test, which measures selective attention and cognitive flexibility, and the Wechsler Memory Scale-III (WMS-III), a validated instrument for evaluating short-term and working memory functions. The RTP after sleep restriction showed a significant prolongation compared to regular sleep duration (20.2 ± 8.8 vs 26.6 ± 12.3 sec, respectively; ANOVA p < 0.001). Short-term and working memory performances decreased after sleep restriction (10.8 ± 1.9 vs 10.0 ± 2.1 sec and 12.3 ± 2.1 vs 11.4 ± 2.3 sec respectively; ANOVA p ≤ 0.001 for both). Even moderate sleep restriction (e.g. a two-hour reduction) disrupts temporal cognition and memory, underscoring the critical need for sufficient sleep to sustain optimal cognitive performance in high-demand scenarios.

A computerized system for measuring time perception in human subjects

Perception of safe robot idle time in virtual reality and real industrial environments